Fantasy Politics USA

Barack Obama released a complete list of all the pork he has asked the Senate to vote on. He had 113 different items, or pet projects totaling about 300 million dollars. According to Obama he is disclosing “earmarks to improve government transparency.” Here is a complete list of Obama’s federal funding request. It ranges from 53 million that he, and other Senators, asked for to promote “civic competence and responsibility among American students and provides support for education exchange activities in civics and economics between the United States and other nations,” to $125,000 to add turn lanes and traffic lights at an intersection in rural Oregon, Ill. Obama is the first presidential candidate to disclose this list, and he is encouraging the others to do the same. You would think lawmakers would be proud of what they are tying to do for their home district, but for some reason they all want to hide this information.
Also Obama’s campaign has picked the four donors that will get to sit down to have dinner with Obama next month at a Washington, D.C., restaurant. The campaign went through thousands of entries and picked two woman, and two men. The campaign will pay for all the cost for travel and the dinner. Click here if you want to meet the four dinner guests. You can also send them a note, or give them a question to ask Obama.
Alan Cosgrove

Bill Clinton will join Hillary on the campaign trail later next month. Bill Clinton will travel to Iowa with her July 2 – 4 to help her pick up support in Iowa. This will be the first time he has campaigned with her, on her behalf. He has attended fundraisers with her in the past. Hillary feels that Iowa is her weakest state, and Bill is very popular there. Last fall they announced he would speak at the Iowa Democratic Party’s biggest annual fundraiser, and the event sold out in hours. Last month an internal memo recommended that Hillary bypass this important early state because of her lackluster support there, but she decided against the memo. A win in Iowa could be the ticket that pushes Hillary ahead of Obama for good. That would be the only reason to break out the big Bill guns this early in the campaign.
Alan Cosgrove

Mitt Romney is now selling official Mitt Gear. If you contribute $50 to his campaign you can get a choice of a hat, a shirt, or a water bottle with the new official Romney for President logo. You only have until June 21 to cash in on this great offer. According to the ad for the stuff, “Now show off your support proudly by wearing the new, official Romney for President logo when you go out in your neighborhood. Remember: the official Mitt Romney T-shirt, hat, and water bottle are not yet offered anywhere else.” Next year you can probably find them at your local Goodwill store. But wait there’s more. After you get your gear, the Romney team wants a photo of you, your pets, and family wearing their official Romney gear. You can send the photo’s to MyPhoto@MittRomney.com. They will post their favorite photos at mittromney.com.
Alan Cosgrove

Fred Thompson traveled to London today to give a speech before the Policy Exchange, a conservative think tank. The title of the speech is “Strengthening the Transatlantic Alliance.” On Wednesday he will meet with former Prime Minister Margret Thatcher. According to his aides they hope the meeting with Thatcher will “enhance his support among devotees of former President Ronald Reagan.” They say his trip will “bolster his foreign policy credentials and elevate him above the increasingly contentious fray of the GOP race” His credentials include eight years in the Senate, and some T.V. and movie work, so a little foreign travel could “bolster” those credentials. He also plans on traveling to Israel later this year. I think with those two trips under his belt he will have more foreign policy credentials than George W. Bush had when he first ran, and he has a bigger acting career than Ronald Reagan. So if you close your eyes and click your heels together he looks like the perfect candidate. Right now people are supporting him because of their dissatisfaction with the other ten candidates the Republicans have offered. All they really see is the character Thompson plays on his T.V. show, but once the campaign starts we will get to see the real Fred Thompson. In a national USA Today/Gallup poll he is already in second place with 19%. In a South Carolina Mason-Dixon poll he leads with 25%. He will mix up the race when he enters, but I doubt he can remain this popular by only claiming to be the second coming of Ronald Reagan. I hope Republicans are looking for more than that.
Alan Cosgrove

Last week Barack Obama’s campaign team released a memo and asked reporters not to identify their source. It was a memo criticizing Hillary Clinton for her close ties to India, and Indian-Americans. The title to the memo was, ‘HILLARY CLINTON (D-PUNJAB)’S PERSONAL FINANCIAL AND POLITICAL TIES TO INDIA.’ It even included a joke from a speech that Clinton gave to some Indian-Americas last year at a fundraiser. “I can certainly run for the Senate seat in Punjab and win easily,” she joked. This is called opposition research, which is stuff all campaigns produce about their rivals, and pass off to reporters and bloogers. Sometimes they don’t want to be identified as the source and other times they boldly produce it. It could be a past vote, business deals, or conflicting statements. The accuracy is up to reporters to sort out. Another good example of this is from last week when John McCain’s team released a video of a Mitt Romney news conference from 2005 proclaiming his commitment to upholding abortion rights laws as governor of Massachusetts. This was released just days before Romney was to speak before a large anti-abortion group. But Barack Obama said he wasn’t going to play politics as usual saying, “If you want a new kind of politics, it’s time to turn the page.” Obama’s camp had to acknowledge they were the source of the Hillary Punjab memo when Clinton got a copy of it, and turned it over the New York Times. The attack backfired on Obama, since it gave Clinton the opportunity to show that Obama is not above the other politicians like he claims. Obama also caught a lot of slack from the Indian-American community for promoting racial stereotypes about Indian-Americans. On Monday Obama apologized for the memo saying it was, “a dumb mistake on our campaign’s part and I made it clear to my staff in no uncertain terms that it was a mistake.” “It is not reflective of the long-standing relationship I have had with the Indian-American community,” he said, adding that outsourcing was a genuine issue “but to refer to one particular country was, I think, an error and I let all of us know that we’ve got to be more careful about how we communicate.” Instead of attacking his rivals in secret, with stabs at outsourcing maybe Obama should look at why companies outsource. He could talk about the tax breaks given to huge companies that outsource our labor. Or maybe even offer some solutions to outsourcing. Instead he stoops to the level he claims he wouldn’t, and proves he is just like the rest of them.
Alan Cosgrove

Mitt Romney was in Iowa today and he told the crowd he “wants to carry the big stick.” He said he wants to boost the size of the military by 100,000 more troops, and increase the military budget. I guess he doesn’t think the stick is big enough now. He gets the whole stick idea from President Theodore Roosevelt who said the United States should “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” when dealing with other nations. “I hope I don’t have to use it, but I want to make sure we have it so that people understand we are a nation of strength,” Romney said. We are already the worlds largest manufacturer of military weapons, and have the worlds strongest military. I think the rest of the world already understands who is number one. President Bush has been swinging that stick around for the last 6 years, and all it has done is made us less safe. “If you look across the world you can recognize that there is terror going on,” Romney said. “There is a worldwide effort of different people all intent on bringing down modernity and, replacing it, in some respects, with barbarism.” He believes that all these barbarians understand is the end of the stick. So all we need to do is act like Buford Pusser in ‘Walking Tall,’ and everything will be O.K. again. Romney added some praise for President Bush, saying, “Everything he does, he does from the standpoint of what is best for the American people.” He said Bush has improved the economy, helped develop renewable resources for energy, and picked some good Supreme Court judges. What planet has Romney been on?
Alan Cosgrove

Bill Richardson comes from an area where water is important, so it is no surprise that he would recommend the creation of a new cabinet, the Department of Water. “I would hold a national water summit,” Richardson said. “All states have a stake when it comes to future water needs.” He said it is usually the rural areas that get the short end on the water issue, and his policies would look to correct that. Currently water issues are handled by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation. Elevating water to a cabinet level would give it the attention it needs according to Richardson. “Everybody thinks water is only a western issue, but it’s not,” said Richardson. He said he would direct his water secretary to build consensus among all 50 states. They could buy and sell water to different states with conservation as a goal.
Alan Cosgrove